A Tale of 2 Tempos

This article was originally posted by Charlene at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I am excited for tomorrow morning as I get to track four friends racing Boston. This definitely brightens up what has been a very gray couple of weeks. All of them are prepared to run great races and I will be so happy to watch them do so from my computer screen. Plus I think that either Shalane or Kara will come through in a big way. Hopefully there will be lots of me cheering like a freak all morning.

Last week was a very good week of running with an excellent tempo run of 6 miles @ 6:32, a 5×1000 workout, and a 15 mile long run to total up to 60 miles for the week. I was feeling really good about the direction my fitness was going and excited enough to sign up for Crazy Legs for the first time ever. In the past I have not ran this race due to the lack of seeding for those who have not ran the race the previous year. This year it appears that they will seed the newbies so I can only hope I will not start behind a wall of walkers.

This week was a crappy week of running. It was a cutback week so I aqua jogged with a friend on Monday, ran easy the next 2 days, took Thursday off, ran a crappy tempo run on Friday, ran on the TM on Saturday, and was blown around like a kite today for a total of 41 miles (plus an hour of aqua jogging) This endless stretch of cold damp weather really makes me a bit depressed and achy. The tempo run was crappy as I just was missing a gear and could not run fast as I averaged 6:57 for 6 miles. I think the effort did feel much more like an aerobic threshold rather than a Lactate threshold. I was not hurting in any way but just could not speed up. I did think about lengthening it out from 6 to 8 miles but the cold drizzle just was not convincing me that I wanted to be outside any longer than the cool down home. I have not yet mastered dressing for cold rain/30 something degree weather. My outside layer is always soaked with rain and my inner layer is always soaked with sweat.

Today I am trying to keep down the negative thoughts that occur after a week of poor running. It is hard to be excited about an upcoming race after a workout fail. One bad workout does tricks on my head and even leads me to wonder if all the good workouts this year have been flukes. I also think that this cutback week just did not do what it should have for me. This may be because I always choose a certain week of the month for a cutback or because each day had the crappiest combination of weather possible. Give me a dry 20 degrees any day over 30s and rain. I read on a blog today about taking two consecutive days in a row off instead of a cutback week. I kind of like that idea so you will have to all weigh in and tell me what you think.

This next week is gonna be better though as I WILL get my groove back and my poor sister is now 41 weeks pregnant so that means that I will be visiting a new baby boy this week.